Looking for Langston depicts the “hidden” gay black male identity during the Harlem Renaissance as a verbal & visual aesthetic black and white film.

Mercer: Fani-Kayode confronts the hybridity of his identity in depicting black masculinity and gay culture.

Golden describes the use of stereotypes in art to represent the ignored diversity in black male culture.

In the essay, “My Brother”, Thelma Golden depicts the high desire to use the black male body as a canvas. In the past, western artists fetishize the body with stereotypes of savagery, overt sexuality, and defiance. Now, contemporary black artists, left to reconstruct and decolonize the body, appropriate stereotypes and various mediums in an attempt to reclaim the black male body. The canvas continues to fascinate media as pop culture consumes the black male body for its fame and infamy in sex, crimes, and sports. These multiple uses of the canvas represent a fight and struggle over the body’s representation. The contradiction that this contest produces is undeniable: the black male body is invisible yet overrepresented, an endangered presence yet a historic icon, demonized yet overinterpreted. Kobena Mercer explains it best when he describes the body as a site of “social identity in crisis” and “ideological representation.” The debate over the representation of the black male body exemplifies the crisis of the canvas.

The debate sparked by the negative imagery of the black male body, which overshadows the positive imagery, continues as the negative images are thought to represent black masculine culture. Golden emphasizes that this misinterpretation is false, as black masculinity, like other cultures, cannot be defined by stereotypes. There is “no single way to represent the black male.” Since black masculinity exists as an identity of otherness, the debate over representation and the authors of the imagery will continue to exist. Despite the privilege of masculinity, black males still face the social construct of their blackness, which defines their otherness. Jeff Koons, a Caucasian American, produced the work below, Moses. It notes the success of black men in sports, representing Moses Malone, a professional basketball player. But the contradiction of the name Moses, a hero from the Bible, and the hell-like background plays on the double consciousness of the black male, one with the privilege of masculinity yet the burden of blackness. The artist’s identity and the image’s contradiction set an example of causes for the continued debate over the image of black masculinity.

Moses by Jeff Koons, 1985